I know the stat, but you knew that it was going to be brought up on the broadcast. That was going to be an obvious talking point on ABC if and when Texas led against Texas A&M on Friday night in the regular-season finale.
Texas beat 3 top-10 teams in the regular season, which was something that nobody else in America has done this year. Not too shabby.
The Longhorns got off to a slow start, but accelerated in the second half in what turned out to be their best game of the season on Friday night in a 27-17 win vs. No. 3 Texas A&M. Texas finally got a 100-yard rusher, it harassed the normally mistake-free Marcel Reed and Arch Manning made plays on the move in the second half that probably made all the NFL Draft folks swoon.
But back to the stat. Like, the No. 1 stat that every Texas fan from coast-to-coast will be shouting at one another over the course of the next 9 days leading up to Selection Sunday. Texas did something that no team in the 2020s has done by beating 3 top-10 teams (AP Poll) in the regular season. Excluding conference championship games, that’s something that nobody has done since 2019 LSU. As in, the team who delivered arguably the most impressive season in college football history (not that Texas needed any reminders of that).
What Texas fans might need some reminders of, though, is that those 3 losses happened. Their 2025 résumé might’ve gotten a signature win, but it shouldn’t be enough to get to the Playoff.
Of course, Steve Sarkisian sang a different tune in the postgame interview.
“That team is undefeated, No. 3 in the country. A lot of the pundits out there think they’re the No. 1 team in the country. We just beat ’em by 10,” he said.
What type of statement did Texas make to the selection committee by handing A&M its first loss?
“If you really look at the body of work, and you look at the Southeastern Conference and what we have to go through every week, look at the nonconference schedule we played to go to Ohio State, Week 1 and we lose by 7 and we out-gained them by nearly 200 yards, we’ve got a really good football team,” Sarkisian said, “and it would be a disservice to our sport if this team’s not a Playoff team when we went and scheduled that nonconference game because if we’re a 10-2 team, it’s not a question … so is that what college football is about? Don’t play anybody and just have a good record? Or play the best and put the best teams in the Playoff, and we’re one of the best teams.”
OK, a lot to unpack there.
He’s right to point out that not all conferences are created equally, and that the SEC has the deepest group of teams. He’s also right that if Texas had just scheduled UMass instead of Ohio State, yes, there’s a good chance that Friday night’s second-half comeback would’ve put the Longhorns into the Playoff field. It’s worth noting that there are 7 Power Conference teams with 2 losses who are currently ahead of Texas, as well as 8 teams with 0-1 losses, which is why it feels unlikely that a jump into the field is imminent unless complete chaos unfolds.
But let’s back up a second.
Sarkisian is putting a ton on that Ohio State game, wherein his team was held without a point for the first 56:32. He also added “we out-gained them by nearly 200 yards” when Texas actually out-gained the Buckeyes by 133 yards, even though 98 of those yards came in the final 4 minutes when Ohio State was trying to preserve a 14-0 lead. I add that context because Sarkisian is trying to spin the narrative that Texas controlled the No. 1 team in the country, and while it was the Buckeyes’ closest game of the season, anybody who remembers watching that game back in August knows that wasn’t the case.
According to Sarkisian’s unbiased opinion, “it would be a disservice to the sport” if that was the thing that held Texas out of the Playoff. Dare I say, Texas has already been shown plenty of grace for that loss by the selection committee. It’s not just that Texas was the top 3-loss team at No. 16. It was that going into the Georgia game, the Longhorns were at No. 10 and very much still in the running if they had played down to the wire. But then they got blown out in Athens and fell outside of the field.
Sarkisian arguing that the Ohio State loss sends the wrong message ignores the point staring him in the face. If they had won that game, they would’ve already been in the field and likely in line to host a Playoff game again. Go ask Texas A&M about what it means to travel for a big-time road game in nonconference play and win it. It’s been everything for the Aggies to have that Notre Dame win because without it, they’d be getting compared to 2024 Indiana because of their extremely favorable conference schedule draw.
Also, it’s rich hearing Sarkisian focus on that Ohio State game while conveniently ignoring some other obvious things that held his team back from being Playoff-worthy.
Has he forgotten that Florida happened? Because if it didn’t happen, Texas would be in the Playoff. But it did. It very much did.
Yes, that atmosphere is remarkable. I was there. I can confirm that on that day, The Swamp was rocking.
Also of note, Florida is now 3-8. Texas trailed that entire game and got beat in every facet — it lost the yards battle 457-341 — against a team that didn’t sniff bowl contention. It would be a disservice to the sport if the selection committee gave Texas special treatment for that showing against a Florida team that went 1-5 with 4 double-digit losses and 1 head coach firing after that afternoon.
Ah, but the wins! Bring up the stat again!
OK, I will. Sarkisian’s preseason No. 1 team entered Friday night having allowed 31 points in 4 consecutive games, including a 37-point, 512-yard effort to 2-win Arkansas last week in Austin.
Oops. Was that not the stat?
Sure, Anthony Hill Jr. was out for that one. On Friday, it was all the more impressive that Texas bottled up A&M without him. It’s too bad for the Longhorns that, at several points with Hill on the field this season, Texas didn’t look close to one of the best teams in the sport. It’s not just that it took the 17 -point comeback at Mississippi State, who was trying to beat its first SEC foe in 2 years. It also was the Kentucky game, wherein the Longhorns again won in overtime vs. a 5-win team.
Then again, they were out-gained by more than 200 yards, so did that win really even matter?
After that game, Michael Taaffe insisted that reporters were being too negative about Texas after it was held to 179 yards against a lowly Kentucky team, and that 2024 Georgia had a similar showing in Lexington before winning the SEC Championship. We don’t need to revisit the “what’s wrong with Georgia” takes that everyone had after that one, but we can revisit the difference between those 2 teams. Unlike a Georgia team that was undefeated at the time of that 2024 game in September, that was a mid-October game wherein a 2-loss Texas still lacked urgency. That was the problem.
Sarkisian denied after the Georgia loss that this Texas team “underachieved,” even though it was 7-3 after earning the first preseason AP No. 1 ranking in program history. Sarkisian insisted those expectations were the doing of AP voters, and that he was proud of how his team handled adversity. He also admitted that at Texas, you’re held to a championship standard.
Texas has not played to a championship standard for the majority of this season. Longhorn fans know that deep down because they’ve watched this team fail to control opponents like the previous 2 did en route to Playoff semifinals trips. This year, that championship standard was there at key moments against Oklahoma, as well as the majority of that wild game against Vanderbilt. You can add Friday night to that group.
But if and when Texas doesn’t hear its name called among that Playoff field on Selection Sunday, it won’t be a disservice.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
